Land Rover choose Oxford Sensor Technology
Vehicle build quality is of paramount importance to Land Rover. To ensure safety, reduce wind noise, maintain a high aesthetic quality and prevent water leaks, it is vital that the vehicle windows, moon roof assembly and seals are fitted correctly.
Land Rover (Solihull UK) has chosen the SRS VisionSensor system from Oxford Sensor Technology Ltd (Abingdon UK) to guide the robots which fit the glass, high level brake light assembly and part of the door seal to its new Series 3 Discovery, and also to glaze the Range Rover Sport.
The glazing cell on the new assembly line comprises six ABB robots, each fitted with SRS VisionSensors. Four robots are dedicated to fitting the front, rear and side windows. The remaining two robots are used to fit the moonroof assembly and provide back up for the main glazing system.
The new facility can cope with whatever vehicle (Discovery or Range Rover Sport) or sequence of model variants that arrive on the skillet conveyor - automatically fitting the correct size and variant (tinted, non-tinted, etc) of glass into the vehicle.
The glazing sequence is as follows:
The robot picks the glass from a centring table.
The glass is moved through a pre-programmed path under a nozzle, which dispenses a polyurethane bead.
The robot then positions the glass near the vehicle.
the SRS VisionSensor, the exact position of the aperture, into which the glass will fit, is measured relative to the robot's actual position.
Any positional correction is applied, as directed by the SRS VisionSensor and the glass accurately fitted.
The high-level brake light cell comprises a single robot, which bonds the light unit into the vehicle tailgate. The system operates in exactly the same manner as the glazing cell.
Both the glazing cell and brake light cell were supplied by ASM Dimatec (Reus Spain).
The third cell employs new technology developed by 3M and Technorop (France). The Cant Rail seal (the part of the door seal attached to the "A" pillar, vehicle roof and "D" pillar) has a pressure activated adhesive strip along its rear surface. A SRS VisionSensor is mounted on the robot's tooling. The robot moves to three points along the side of the vehicle and the SRS VisionSensor measures the actual body position. The robot's path is offset and the robot applies the seal, maintaining a constant application force as it travels along the vehicle.
SRS VisionSensor
Unlike traditional vision systems, the SRS VisionSensor is unique in using specular reflections to locate features on the vehicle body. Specular Reflections are glints or highlights, which run along curves in the surface of any shiny material - such as a painted car bodies. They are repeatable, easy to analyse and unaffected by vehicle colour, making them the ideal characteristic on which to base a vision system for use in vehicle assembly.
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